Much unlike many a magazine editor who recommends you buy all sorts of crap that they most likely got for free, your Jezebel staff doesn't get jack shit (other than books, unsolicited). And that's how it should be. But on our own time, in our personal lives, we still buy stuff. So this is Worth It, our recommendation of random things that we've actually spent our own money on. These are the things we buy regularly or really like, things we'd actually tell our friends about. And now we're telling you.

One time my older sister—a magical witchy-poo lady who is always on the cutting edge of elixirs and potions—came and stayed with me for a few days, and when she left she gave me a tiny sample-size bottle of body wash as a "present." It was old and crusty, there were only like three drops left in the bottom, and mostly I think she just didn't want to have to carry it home, but it's still one of the best presents I've ever gotten.

Advertisement

This shit smells sooooooooooo good, you guys! It's called "Kings & Queens Chinese Princess Jasmine Body Wash" and I swear you can get drunk on it. It smells like flowers if flowers were heroin (YES, YES, I KNOW) and heroin was something you could have sex with and then devour your mate afterwards like a praying mantis (and also your mate was a delicious hamburger). It's flowery without being cloying and musky without being masculine and almost…umami, if I can say that without sounding a complete douche. I cannot be sure that it does not contain MSG.

Tragically, my little crusty baby-bottle of body wash ran out almost immediately, and I was forced to stand in the shower weeping and huffing its ghost. That's when I remembered the internet!

Advertisement

Surely the internet could supply my next fix. (Also I was hoping they also manufactured the scent as a perfume—I'm really a bar-soap-and-washcloth kind of girl rather than the body-wash-and-thingy type. But no such luck.) Weirdly, though I could find a mention here and there of "Kings & Queens Chinese Princess Jasmine Body Wash," nobody was selling it! It was out of stock everywhere! What was I going to do? I NEED MY MEDICINE, PEOPLE.

Eventually I found a website for a store that's basically the German equivalent of Sephora (they call it Sefuhrer) that seemed to have bottles of the stuff for sale. The website was entirely in German. I do not speak German. Basically I clicked a bunch of buttons, whichever ones looked the most like they might say "BUY IT!!!" (according to the very scientific web translator I consulted just now, the German word for "BUY IT!!!" is "HAT ES GESCHLUCKT!!!" so, yeah…hella intuitive), and just pounded my credit card number in willy-nilly. And then, two weeks later, two bottles of "Kings & Queens Chinese Princess Jasmine Body Wash" arrived at my door with an adorable German thank-you note! To this day I have no idea how much it cost. Then I got German e-mail spam for a year.

Advertisement

Anyway, I hoarded those little bottles so hard that I still have one of them and it's completely full. Because how the fuck was I going to locate that German website again and get more? But doing research for this post today, I typed "Kings & Queens Chinese Princess Jasmine Body Wash" into Google and guess what? You can buy it one million places. Like here. Or here. Or here. And it's only £5.00 for 300 ml, which means it's not some mysterious, boutiquey, high-brow thingy like I'd originally thought—it's just some European drug-store Jean Naté shit! Which makes me like it even more.

And now that I know where to get it, I will be using an entire bottle during my next shower. And possibly drinking some of it.